1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to furniture and, in particular, to a multi-purpose chair which can be used as a loom. The chair portion is of the type that comprises a rigid frame with a flexible seat, usually of a piece of elongated woven cloth supported at the ends by members on the frame. The loom portion of the chair is the result of the placement of a plurality of support members to hold the yarn (warp) to be woven in the manner of the well-known Inkle loom.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The Inkle loom has been known for many years; however, such looms require the operator (weaver) to use one hand to operate the shuttle carrying the shuttle yarn or woof or weft threads, and the other hand to change the sheds which are made up of groups of warp threads or individual strands of yarn alternately raised and lowered after each pass of the shuttle yarn. The general side view configuration of an Inkle loom is similar to FIG. 3 of U.S. Pat. No. 1,007,897. U.S. Pat. Nos. 737,073; 758,376; and 760,919 are examples of simple hand looms without moveable sheds. Examples of hand looms with moveable sheds are amply illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,274,948; 1,615,805; 2,253,167; 2,077,532; and 2,797,710. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,817,366 and 3,776,280 disclose methods for changing sheds on a weaving machine.
In all of the prior art devices, the sheds in hand looms had to be raised or lowered by hand (Inkle) or by complicated mechanical arrangements (patents cited above) and in either case, the loom had no other purpose save weaving.